now Ned’s hand was at her back, guiding her. She braced her legs and sat down with care; Ben was drowsing in her arms, and she didn’t want to jostle him. Her stockings chafed her at the waist; she was hot. A current seemed to be moving through her, threading through her arteries like a wire, humming with an extraneous energy that was too much for her body to contain. Was she going to have some sort of episode? She tightened her arms around Ben and felt grateful for the curve and solidity of the wood under her, for its smoothness. It was cherry, she thought, suddenly. Hardwood with lethal flower, horse killer.
The minister led them in prayer. Lindsay Acheson was slated to speak. After the hymn, she made her way to the gilded lectern, her round face streaked with tears.
“Charlotte was my best friend as a little girl,” she began in a reedy voice. “And though the years thrust us apart in some ways, I will never forget her high spirits, her sense of mischief and fun. Once—”
Knox glanced to her right, at Bruce. He looked frozen in place. She grazed Ben’s back with her fingers; he stirred, then rearranged himself on Knox’s breast, completely asleep now.
Lindsay continued. This is a memorial for Charlotte’s youth, Knox thought, not for Charlotte herself. The flowers at the altar were pink and fluted. The picture of Charlotte that had been chosen for the program looked too young, too innocent, to really be her. Knox had no idea where it had been taken. Had her mother asked Bruce to provide it?
The minister touched Lindsay’s arm as she descended from the lectern. He looked hollowed out to Knox, devoid of color, his robe furling around him as he moved as if there were nothing substantively corporeal under it. He smiled before speaking.
“I did not know this young woman in life,” he began. “Though it has been my pleasure to get to know the Bollings recently, and to get to know Charlotte through the recollections of those who loved her. This is one of the most difficult tasks a minister can be faced with: the memorializing of a person whose hand one never shook, whose face one never saw animated in conversation.”
Knox stole a glance at her mother, who sat rigidly upright, her fine hair teased into a gossamer cloud around her face. Her eyes were rapt; Knox could see this man could break her with a word.
“The artist Piranesi was trained as an architect. He was famous for his etchings, which took existing Roman ruins and restored them to their original glory. He re-created what was missing, through his art. I suppose you could call this some version of my job, to fill in both my gaps in knowledge so that I may do full honor to Charlotte’s life, and to fill in the gaps in each of you today created by her loss, so that we may feel more whole, and our celebration of her more whole.”
The minister paused to sip from a glass of water that had been placed somewhere at his elbow; it took him twice as long as it should have to accomplish this small thing.
“A series of Piranesi’s etchings, though, called Imaginary Prisons, were different from his other works,” he continued. “These were also of architectural structures, but instead of visions of perfection, they were mazes without exits. Staircases led upward into stone walls, doors were placed without purpose. In these works, the edifice became a trap, a trick, a nightmare.”
What is he talking about, Knox thought. That he’d referred so openly to the fact he’d never even met Charlotte made her feel anxious. Couldn’t he have lied about that?
“Such is life with and without God. With God, we have the power to realize the vision of the great architect of our lives, and to realize the fullness of our relationships with others. Without God, the most magnificent of structures—mainly, us—becomes devoid of meaning and purpose. Perhaps Piranesi understood these distinct possibilities. But what it’s important to know is that without God, the process of assigning the life and death of this cherished young woman her proper place and meaning in each of your lives may become a maze from which it is impossible to discover any exit.”
Knox felt her thoughts crowding through her; she was unable to slow them down. Her knee grazed the pew in front of her as she shifted, and she found herself focusing on